


with all my shadows

by feminist14er



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-04 15:10:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4142379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feminist14er/pseuds/feminist14er
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a collection of miscellaneous writings</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. through the woods we ran

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clarke tames a horse. Title from "Mountain Sound", by Of Monsters and Men.

She’s been out in the woods for three weeks when she sees it for the first time. It’s just a flash of chestnut through the trees as she’s walking, but it’s enough to make her double-take. It’s there, grazing, and for a second, she’s worried when its head jolts up, that it’s going to have two faces, but when it turns to face her, nostrils blowing, it’s a normal horse, stripe down its face. Her breath catches, and it’s the loveliest thing she’s seen in months, a breath of light through the cobwebs of her mind.

The horse stomps its back foot, swishes its tail, and wanders off. Clarke closes her eyes, breathes, and moves on.

\--

The moment lingers with her over the next couple of days. She’s been on the move steadily, collecting berries and hunting when she can, and if she’s not well-fed, she’s not starving either. She’s staying away from the remains of TonDC, and while she thinks the horse could have gotten loose after the missile, she thinks that she’s miles from the village, and she assumes that they’ve rounded up most of their livestock. Horses in particular are few and far between, from what she heard from Lexa, and they’re going to be needed to rebuild.

\--

It’s two days later when she hears a soft whuffling noise around her camp in the night. A spike of dread works its way down her spine; she hasn’t encountered anything bigger than a deer so far, but the threat of panthers and gorillas have been at the back of her mind, a quiet threat that’s kept her awake at least once.

She reaches for the gun next to her, sliding her blankets off her quietly. She’s noticed that her vision has gotten better, adjusted to the darkness the longer she’s been away from the lights of the Ark, and it’s with this change that she’s able to see – it’s the horse again.

She sits up slowly; she has no practical knowledge of taming horses, of course, but she read about them on the Ark, and she knows that sudden movements can cause them to shy. She doesn’t know what her fascination with this particular animal is, but she’s been alone for longer than she’s been alone in her entire life, and a companion would be nice, but this kind of companion would be helpful.

She watches the horse for a few minutes; it’s sniffing around her camp, and she thinks that if it didn’t come from TonDC, it must still be from some village, somewhere; animals just aren’t this comfortable around humans unless they’ve been tamed, domesticated, and that’s learned behavior. When it gets close to her, she gently eases her hand out from under the blankets, and holds it out for the horse to sniff. Its ease prick forward, but it doesn’t startle, extending its neck and whuffing gently at her hand, and Clarke feels like her heart is going to burst out of her chest. She reaches up slowly, scratching at its cheeks, and it doesn’t bolt, instead leans into her touch, and she feels like crying in delight.

They stay like that for a while, Clarke scratching at the face of the horse, its eyes closing against her touch. It’s only when Clarke goes to stand up that it jerks back, neck up and backing away. Clarke keeps her eyes down and turns away from it, arm extend to the side. She waits, listens as the horse slowly approaches her, reaches out to touch its nose to her palm. She moves toward it slowly, keeping her hand on it the whole time, brushing along its neck and feeling the tangles in the mane. She slowly turns toward it, and she can’t see so well in the dark, but she can feel that the horse’s coat is dirty and its mane and tail are matted. Still, she can’t count its ribs, so it must be reasonably healthy. She can feel it breathe, almost a sigh as it seems to settle under her touch. She pats its hip gently, and walks back to her furs. She doesn’t know if the horse will be there in the morning, but she needs to sleep if she’s going to keep moving.

The thought of taming the horse, keeping it, haunts her dreams.

\--

When she wakes in the morning, she doesn’t see the horse, and she can’t hear it, but she doesn’t think it’s wandered too far away. She eats some berries and some nuts before starting to move forward, moving on again, and it’s only then that she hears the rustling behind her. She doesn’t turn around; it doesn’t sound like a gorilla, and a panther would be more quiet. She smiles, just a little, and moves forward. As she moves, the rustling stays right behind her until she can feel breath on her neck.

She wants to turn around, look the horse in the face, but she stops, extends her arm, just like she did last night, waits for it to come to her. The horse moves around her, breathes onto her palm.

In the stories she read as a kid, people always fed their horses apples. She hasn’t seen an apple since she was on the Ark, but she has some berries in her pockets, and she lays them flat on her palm, just like she read, lets the horse lip at her palm. She turns, just a little bit, just so she can see the horse. Its ears are up, and when she brings her hand up to its neck, it doesn’t flinch away, lets her stroke up and down. She feeds it some more berries, then walks forward, waits for it to follow. It does, and she keeps feeding it at she goes.

She keeps moving through the forest, and the horse follows her. She’s not entirely sure what to do from here. The only horse she rode was trained by the Trigedakru, and it had a saddle and a bridle. She doesn’t have food for it, and while there are meadows she could lead it to for grass, she doesn’t have a way to guide it, much less ride it.

And really, what does she need a horse for? She’s not a warrior, not anymore. She doesn’t need it to get around, even. She set off on her two feet, and she has no need to move any faster. The point is being away, not constantly moving. And really, being on a horse in the forest doesn’t make any sense.

But then, there’s the companionship. She doesn’t want the people she left behind; doesn’t want their judgment, their compassion. Whichever way the emotions fall, they require more work from her, and she can’t give any more of herself now. But the horse is unneeding, not burdened with the knowledge of her transgressions.

It is this thought that has her changing direction, heading toward a grassy field a three hour walk away. The horse follows.

\--

She’s been thinking about constructing a bridle while they’ve been walking; she’s chanced enough glances at the horse to think that she could ride it bareback, and she might be able to teach it to be guided only with her knees, but she’s only ridden a horse once before, and she doesn’t think that’s the best option.

If she went back to the bunker, though, she thinks she could find some rope to make a halter and reins, at least.

The horses starts trotting forward when it sees the grass, and it’s not long before it has turned its back to Clarke and is grazing, tearing great mouthfuls of grass and chewing slowly. There’s not much for Clarke to scavenge here, but she’s been carrying some meat strips around that are going to go bad soon if she doesn’t eat them, so she sets to tearing them apart with her teeth, sitting and watching the horse.

She retreats back into the cover of the forest at night, but she can hear the horse settling in the grass as she falls asleep.

\--

The problem, she thinks, as she wakes up, is that she’s going to accidentally lead the horse to the bunker, vanish, and not know if it’s going to be there when she gets back. Still, it’s not a long walk to the bunker, and it might be worth it to tame the horse fully.

It’s a two day walk through the forest back to the bunker, so they rest in the field for a day before starting the trek. Clarke rips up large handfuls of the grass and rolls it up, stuffs it in her backpack. She doesn’t think it’s enough, but the horse survived long enough on its own, so she assumes it knows how to forage.

She leads it through the forest, stopping every so often to offer it food, and it always eats from her hand. She takes to facing its side while it eats, strokes down its sides, pulls burrs out of its mane when she can.

She sleeps at night, always with the horse in view, its head drooping. It’s always on its feet when she wakes up, never lays down while they’re in the forest. She thinks it must be scary to be a herd animal and be this enclosed; when they first landed, she felt the same, her monkey brain shorting out at every noise. Still, the horse follows her, and the remaining optimistic part of her hopes that it is learning to trust her.

She finds the bunker remarkably easily, and the lack of vegetation growing around it makes her uneasy; she thinks that other people are accessing it, and she hopes she doesn’t find someone squatting below.

She drops some grass on the ground for the horse, pulls out her gun, and starts down the ladder one-handed. She doesn’t see or hear anyone, so it’s with the assumption that whoever has been in the bunker recently isn’t there currently.

She’s rummaging around when she hears someone climbing down the ladder, shouting, “Anybody there?”

It’s Miller, she can tell from his voice, and he sounds like he’s alone. Still, she instinctively curls up, gun out, hiding in the shadows.

“Who’s down here?” he calls out.

There’s nothing for it, she thinks as she uncurls, stepping out into the light.

She walks toward Miller, and when he turns around, his jaw all but drops. “Clarke?” He asks.

She nods, is startled to feel her chin wobbling and tears gathering in her eyes. “Hi, Miller.” She forces a smile, and all of a sudden, she’s being hugged, strong arms wrapping around her and his beard rubbing against her face.

She’s choking back her tears, struggling not to cry, and when he lets go of her, she manages a real smile.

“Clarke, what the hell are you doing here? Where have you been?” His hands are still on her arms, his eyes searching hers. He looks well, she thinks; she heard he was never drilled, but knows he was fighting the guards at Mount Weather, and she’s happy to see that his clothes look well-taken care of, that he’s warmly dressed.

She shakes her head. “I, um. I needed some rope,” she squeaks out.

He laughs, his head dropping. “That your horse up there?”

“Is it still there?”

“Uh, yeah. Didn’t seem too startled when I dropped down here, so as a guard dog it’s absolutely terrible. How the hell are you?” he repeats.

“I’m okay,” she answers quickly. “I just. I really needed not to be there.”

Miller looks at her, steady. “Clarke, you left us. We needed you still.” He lets go of her, steps back. His shoulders are tense, she realizes suddenly, and his face is worried.

“I…I know that.” She looks around, avoids meeting his eyes. “Is everyone okay?”

He huffs a laugh. “I guess that depends on your definition of okay. People are recovering, I guess. The grounders made a new alliance with Abby and Kane, so they’re leaving us alone. Bellamy advocated against it, in case you were wondering.”

She looks at him then, wants desperately to ask. He shakes his head, though, and she doesn’t. “Are you doing okay out here? Do you need anything?”

Now she’s the one laughing. “You’re a good guy, Miller. No, I’m okay. I guess I’m looking to tame a horse, so I just need some rope and I’ll get out of here.”

“Clarke. You can come home, you know. You’d be welcome, in fact.”

She can feel tears in her eyes again. “I seriously doubt that, but thank you. I just need some time.”

He impulsively reaches out, hugs her again, and for someone she barely heard twenty words from up until now, she thinks he’s being very affectionate with her. “Do you want me to say anything?” _To Bellamy_ are the unspoken words, and while her heart desperately wants him to know that she’s alive, she’s recovering in her own way, she also wants solitude. He’s given it to her so far, trusted her. She wants that to continue.

“Do you mind not saying anything?” She asks. Miller looks conflicted, but shakes his head. “If you need me, Miller, leave me a sign here. I’ll keep checking back.”

She grabs a length of rope, squeezes Miller’s arm, and hauls herself out of the bunker and back into the sunlight.

\--

She leads the horse back to the field, but she gathers food as she’s going. She doesn’t have enough food for a while, and she can’t use the horse to hunt anything yet, so it’s mostly nut and berry gathering, but she uses the rope to set up some snares the way Lincoln taught them, then walks back out to the field.

She spends some days finding the best combination of knots to make a halter. She’s never seen one, not even in pictures, just heard them described. She models it on the bridle that was on the horse she rode from TonDC, but it’s rope, not leather, and she doesn’t totally know what it should look like, but she finally finds something that fits the horse’s face, and doesn’t seem too loose or too tight. She thinks she should probably use it to tie the horse up, but it’s been reliable so far, and she’s worried that tying it up will make it easy prey.

She feeds the horse, though, and slides the halter over its face with her other hand. It must be a relatively small horse, she thinks, because its head isn’t so tall that she can’t reach over its ears, although she can only barely see over its shoulders.

The horse doesn’t seem to mind the imposition of the halter, and Clarke counts it as a success. She ties a second piece of rope to the halter just above the horse’s chin, and she holds it tight as she begins to move forward. Without so much as another indication from her, the horse moves forward with her, and this cinches it for Clarke: this horse is domesticated, just spooked.

This leads her to a whole new series of questions, which is: if she keeps this horse, what happens if someone identifies it as theirs? Does she have to give it back? She’s already attached to it, has been thinking about the advantage it might give her. She sighs internally. She should probably find out if she can ride the thing, first.

\--

She spends days getting the horse used to being led around, and it’s as she’s practicing this that she notices that it’s limping on one leg. She thinks back to the one or two books she read as a child that had horses in them, and thinks about the chores those girls did when they cared for their horses, thinks about watching the Trigedakru with their horses.

Her best guess is to check its feet, and sure enough, there’s a big pebble digging into the squishy part of the hoof. The horse doesn’t have shoes, which she thinks is good, but she doesn’t really know. She hopes that means its feet are durable, because she certainly doesn’t have the ability to fix its feet beyond digging a stone or two out.

It’s a week or two that she spends working with the horse, cleaning its feet, brushing its sides down with grass, and untangling its mane and tail. She doesn’t find any sign of injury on the horse, which seems unlikely if it escaped from TonDC.

It’s not until she’s spent close to a month with the horse that she tries to ride it. The first time she can’t even get a leg over it, and she realizes that mounting from the ground is going to be impossible, especially since she doesn’t have stirrups. The horse shies away from her then, and she takes a second to hope that she isn’t the first person to ride this horse.

She has to take the horse into the woods to find a stump, but finally she finds one, swings her leg onto the horse’s back before hauling herself upright, and then she’s on the horse’s back, and she’s filled with happiness just as bright as she was when she first saw a horse.

She walks the horse out of the forest, its ears pricked forward, but its walk is steady, rolling forward as Clarke adjusts to sitting on its back.

It’s comfortable enough to just let the horse amble, and it seems to mostly follow her directions when she puts pressure on one rein or the other, so maybe Clarke gets a little over-confidant, but she decides to ask the horse to go faster. When she rode the TonDC horse, she just had to squeeze her legs to get the horse to go faster, so when she does this, she’s expecting the horse to go faster, but not for it to run, and when it does, she’s not prepared, and it’s within seconds that she’s flat on her back gasping for air and praying she hasn’t concussed herself.

The horse stops immediately, and looks surprised when it looks down at her. It would be funny, but Clarke’s head is pounding and she’s still struggling to breathe normally. She’s glad the horse stopped, though, because she’s in no condition to catch it. She slowly sits up, assessing her pain level as she goes. She hasn’t broken anything, she doesn’t think, but her head continues to pound, and the possibility of having a concussion makes her heart race. She thinks she could survive on her own with a concussion, but it makes her nervous just thinking about it.

She tries to think through what needs to happen now, just in case she does have a concussion. Her immediate instinct is to go to the bunker to see if Miller’s there, but she knows that walking that far is pointless, and possibly dangerous. Instead, she drags herself to the closest tree and sits with her back against it. She drinks as much water as she can stomach and thinks through the next 24 hours. She needs to stay awake, she knows.

The horse is standing in front of her now, and she’s probably imagining it, but she thinks the horse looks a little embarrassed. She laughs and reaches out for it, scratching at its forelock. It nudges her leg, and she laughs again, settling in for a long night.

She makes it through the night, and her head continues to throb, but she doesn’t get any weird vision problems, so she thinks she’s probably fine. Still, she stays awake through the rest of the day and falls asleep gratefully the next evening.

\--

She gets back up on the horse a couple of days later, and this time she nudges it a little more carefully. It breaks into a bouncy trot, but she finds she’s more or less able to keep her seat, allowing her back to relax into the motion.

It takes her another week of doing that before she tries letting the horse run again, and when she does, she finds it more comfortable than trotting, now that she isn’t falling off.

As soon as she’s comfortable doing that, she starts riding the horse through the forest, figuring out her balance over difficult terrain. She can get to the bunker in a few hours ride now, and she’s checking it more and more often now, and she’s beginning to wonder if it means that she’s missing the camp more than she values her solitude.

That stops her, though, and she spends a week or more away from the bunker, riding around the forest in a funk, hunting rarely and not collecting enough. When she finally makes her way back the bunker, she sits there and waits.

She waits for almost a week, but finally, finally Miller comes, and when he does, she leads the horse home with him.


	2. let the human in

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke gets interrupted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, that rating went up fast.

It’s an unusually hot day, they’ve been told, and Clarke was in the medbay all day, sweating in the infernal heat of the Ark over a this kid with poison ivy, and that hunter who got heatstroke while they were out hunting. It’s enough to make her want to tear her hair out in frustration, and all she really wanted to do was go to the swimming hole, but Octavia was out with Lincoln and Raven is working on an engineering thing, and really, it was too fucking hot to move, much less hike to cool down.

It’s dusk now, and usually that means that it starts to cool down, but it feels as oppressive as ever, and Clarke is literally lying naked on her cot, praying for a breeze. She can’t have the flaps to her tent open like this, but she can’t stand to wear clothes any more. The things they wore on the Ark are completely ill-suited to the ground; she hasn’t wanted to wear pants in months, and the only reason she keeps wearing long sleeves is that the first time she exposed her shoulders to the sun, she burned so badly she had blisters and a fever.

She wears long-sleeves all day, and she thinks, quite frankly, that she’s earned lying around naked. 

Still, she feels restless lying there, and as much as she just wants to spread her limbs as far away as she possibly can so that no part of her is touching any other part of her, she also has this vague inkling to take this time she’s managed to find for herself and do something with it.

It’s possible she saw Bellamy shirtless today, and it’s equally possible it wound her up just a little more than she’d like.

The thing is, it’s been so hot that he, and most of the men around camp, have long ago ditched whatever clothing they can as the work around camp (and sometimes, she thinks bitterly of the boy with the poison ivy, when they venture outside of camp). Clarke can’t afford herself this luxury, but Bellamy’s skin has always been darker than hers, and under the sun, it only deepens, foregoing the frightening shade of red her own skin turns.

It’s not that she hasn’t seen him without a shirt before, either, she thinks as one of her hands idly traces up her side, goosebumps following in its wake. She saw him when the dropship first landed, and she’s seen him again since then. It’s just that, out of months and months of easing their way back to each other, they’ve started something – else. Nothing’s happened yet, just a lot of looking, a lot of spending even more time together, a lot of closeness. It doesn’t even necessarily mean anything, but – it does.

And, she thinks to herself, he is a man who looks good without his shirt.

She’d almost laugh at the way her thoughts are going, think she was going silly in the heat, because a year ago he wasn’t even with her. She’d sent him away, and it wrecked her heart to do it, but in the spell of coldness after Finn, she’d thought it necessary. In a year, they’ve come more than full circle, and she’s lucky for that, but she’s also craving more, and if she can’t have it from him right now, she’s going to find another way to have it.

She can feel the beginnings of wetness between her legs as she thinks about him, as she mentally maps the freckles across his face, across his shoulders and arms. She drags her fingers across her own body, mapping the places where she wishes he’d touch her. When her hands brush across her breasts, she sighs before settling into touching them, playing, tugging at her nipples. Her teeth catch her lip as she does it, and she breathes, relaxing into her own touch. 

She keeps working at her breasts as she feels the desire and the ache build, and finally she takes one hand away, traces down her body and slips her fingers into her own wetness, arching into her touch. She knows her own touch well, is used to it, and she knows what she likes. She’s stroking between her folds now, gathering the moisture onto her fingers as she moves upward, circling her clit. Her hips cant down into her touch, and she starts moving steadily against her hand, a sigh of pleasure escaping her.

She’s starting to pick up speed, feeling her body wake to her touch when she hears the tent flap rustle, and her eyes snap open to see Bellamy staring at her.

He’s literally got a full on view of her cunt, and he hasn’t turned around yet, but his ears are turning red and his pupils are dilating, and she should want to cover herself up, is halfway to reaching for the blankets, when he lets out a choked “ - Clarke?”

And she’s frozen in place, doesn’t know what she wants, but knows she wants to keep going, can feel herself getting wetter under his gaze, and fuck, he’s right there, just watching, and god she just wants so much.

He seems to abruptly come to his senses, and he turns around to go, muttering an “I’ll come back,” when she interrupts.

“Bellamy.” She says, and her voice is steady, even as she can feel the desire moving through her, demanding something she – well. “Stay?” She asks.

He turns back around, and his pupils are blown, and she just – god she just can’t let him leave right now. His gaze on her is doing things to her, and she just needs him to stay with her, to keep watching her.

“Uh, okay. I – do you want me to do anything?” He says it almost helplessly, and as she’s looking at him, she can see that he’s starting to tent his pants ever so slightly, and she licks her lips at the thought, at the fact that she’s having this effect on him.

“I just – watch me?” She asks, at a loss.

And okay, this is not something she ever thought she’d be into, but she is wetter than she’s ever been right now, and she needs this, needs him to stay with her.

He nods, and it’s not the serious Bellamy nod that she’s used it – it’s slightly frantic, and it’d be laughable except for the look in his eyes, and that alone makes her want to moan out loud, and she’s reaching down again, and she’s so wet and it’s making these obscene noises, and – 

“Fuck, Clarke.” He breathes, and she nods her head, laughing breathlessly as she circles her clit, picking up where she left off, and she can feel the sensations radiating outwards, and it’s so good, and she’s looking at him, and he’s watching her in awe, and that’s when she reaches out for him. He moves toward the bed, and she pulls him down, kisses him messily before gesturing helplessly, and he reaches for her, asks “Can I touch you?”

And she nods, his hand grazing across her breasts, and goddamn, she loves his hands, the calluses along his fingers from hard work catching on her skin and sending her higher, and then he’s asking if he can sit behind her, and she’s nodding frantically, and her back is pressed to his, and he’s cupping her breasts none too gently in his hands while she works herself over, and it’s as he’s tweaking her nipple that she starts feeling like she’s getting close, and she’s whimpering, trying not to make too much noise, and as she presses down harder, she can feel his breath on the back of her neck, his lips making contact with her shoulder and his hand grasping at her breast and everything rolls over her, and fuck it’s amazing, the pleasure and the sensations rolling over every inch of her body as her back arches and her toes clench on the cot and her hand keeps working and working until she’s whimpering at how sensitive she is and Bellamy is easing his hands off her breasts.

It’s then that she can feel how hard he is behind her, and as she starts to come back to earth, the first wave of embarrassment hits her. 

He smooths her hair back from her face and kisses her temple, breathes behind her as she starts to settle back down, and as she feels him breathe, she starts to breathe in tandem, feels her mortification ebb.

Finally, she turns her head and looks at him sideways. “Hi,” she says, half laughing.

“Hi,” he says, grin splitting his face.

“I, um. Didn’t mean for that to happen?” She squeaks. “But thanks, for uh, helping out.”

He laughs, his chest shaking, and it’s a feeling that she likes, feels a knot in her chest come loose. “Any time, princess.”

She turns to look at him again, before looking down. “You want some help with that?”

He laughs again, hard and bright. “If you’re offering.”

She grins at him, turns in his arms, linking her arms around his neck. “Absolutely.”

She thinks, later, as she’s falling asleep in his arms, that they could have started this the traditional way, with him kissing her, and them taking in slowly, but that’s never been them. They’re all or nothing.


	3. everyone loves folk art

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy starts trolling craigslist on accident.

It starts completely innocently. 

Bellamy is looking through the arts and crafts section of craigslist because Octavia has decided that she needs a sewing machine, and like hell is Bellamy buying a new one. He starts out in the appliances section, quickly transfers to the arts and crafts section when he realizes that the appliances section is literally washers and dryers.

When he opens the arts and crafts section, he can’t help it when his jaw drops over the _horrible, godawful crap_ people are selling. There’s a pair of fucking awful vintage lawn flamingoes for $40. _Each_. 

He shakes his head, goes back to searching for sewing machines, finds one that he thinks probably works for a decent price, sends it to Octavia for her approval, and goes back to doing his actual job.

But.

He almost can’t help himself when he goes back on craigslist that night, beer in hand, to troll the craigslist arts and crafts section.

What? It’s been a shitty day, he needs a bit of cheering up. 

He’s three beers into this endeavor when he starts taking screenshots of the worst crafts he can find (“Jesus the Christ”, seriously? For _$200?!_ ) and putting them up on tumblr, mostly as a joke. 

\--

The weird thing is, his tumblr becomes wildly popular. He has to start looking at crafts in other cities, because his own hometown isn’t producing enough shitty craft art for him to keep his queue filled.

It’s when he’s looking through the crafts section of a neighboring town that he stumbles across the weirdest listings so far. It’s not that any singular listing is so weird; it’s the combination of listings by the same person. He finally looks up grrrriffin, only to find that – well, she (he’s pretty sure it’s a woman) is a legit artist. Like, she makes some pretty amazing paintings.

She also makes some pretty fucking awful “crafts”, and he’s not totally sure that this person isn’t just trolling.

But then, he sees the postings disappear intermittently, before being replaced with something even more awful, so he can only assume that someone is _buying this garbage_ , and suddenly it’s everything he can do to not accidentally devote his tumblr to figuring this person out, dissecting their M.O. in the weird internet game that he feels like they’re both playing.

He starts posting the worst of the crafts to his tumblr intermittently, and suddenly he gets a notification that he’s gained a follower, and, yep, it’s this person, whoever they are, and they’ve given him a shoutout on their own tumblr, and he knows that internet is pretty weird, but this is weird enough that he’s not sure if he should be flattered or afraid for his life.

\--

O’s dragged him to some terrible craft fair (he still doesn’t know how he’s ended up being complicit in her weird crafting projects, but she told him it would be a good ethnographic experience for him to talk about on his tumblr, and he didn’t really have anything else to do, so here they are), and it’s in the middle of listening to people talk about “naturally aged ironwood” (he’s never going to get over what people expect to make off this shit, because $300, _seriously_ who even) that he gets a peek at a painting that is – it’s actually really good.

He wanders across the causeway to the booth, sees a flash of blonde hair before a young woman stands up from behind the table, greets the person in front of him, and starts talking animatedly about her work. He moves into the tent, looking at each piece, feeling like the style is vaguely familiar (what, he took art history in college, he has some idea of what he’s talking about).

He nods at the owner, smiles, and ducks out.

It’s as he’s taking a picture of a truly awful cat-themed lampshade (he sometimes just takes pictures of bad crafts and posts them, but he always feels a little worse when he does that. People on craigslist are opening themselves up to scrutiny, he thinks. It is _craigslist_ , after all) when it hits him: the paintings are in the style of grrrriffin.

He bolts back to the table, tries not to be as super awkward and ridiculous as he knows he’s being right now. The woman looks up at him in alarm before recognizing him and offering him a hesitant smile. “Hi?” she says.

“Are you grrrriffin?” Bellamy asks, trying not to be sheepish.

The woman looks at him incredulously, a blush creeping along her face and neck. She stutters a little bit, before Bellamy sticks his hand out. “craigslistcrafts,” he says, grinning. It’s rare to meet internet celebrities, but – he kind of feels like he’s meeting one right now.

She stops stuttering long enough to look him over and start cackling. “Oh my god, _you’re_ the person behind that ridiculous tumblr?”

Bellamy – doesn’t think he should be insulted? Still, the woman realizes he’s not laughing, tries to get herself under control. “I’m so sorry, I’m not – I’m not really laughing at you. It’s just, my friends and I have an ongoing competition to try and get our worst stuff onto your tumblr, and they’re going to be _delighted_ and probably super jealous that I got to meet you.” She wipes her hands off, reaches out to him. “Clarke Griffin,” she says.

He takes her hand. “Bellamy Blake. So – you actually _try_ to make shitty art?”

She looks at him incredulously. “Do you have any idea how awful people’s taste in art is? I make a killing on that crap. And the cost of supplies for that is super low, too.”

Now he’s the one laughing. “And being featured on the tumblr that trolls for shitty art isn’t hurting your revenues?”

She grins. “Not at all. My art has gotten very popular with the hipster crowd. It’s all about having the shittiest art possible.” She looks him over, bites her lip. “Listen, it’s super weird, impromptu internet meet-ups, but do you want to get coffee later? I need to finish out this fair, and then I’m free.”

He grins. “Be delighted. I’ll come find you when it’s over?” 

She nods. “See you in a bit,” she says, waving him off with a grin.

\--

It’s a month or so of dating, and their joint tumblr, grrfncraigslist (a tumblr specializing in the worst possible mythical art) is a wild success. Neither of them is surprised.


	4. listen to that thunder roar, let your spirit soar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Braiding is an important part of Octavia and Lincoln's relationship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For rhimes_or_shotts, who requested a story about Lincoln braiding Octavia's hair. Happy Birthday!

When Octavia wakes up, alone and in a cave, the first thing she realizes is that the wound on her ankle is cauterized and healing, and she has a dim recollection of passing out when the Grounder pressed his hot knife against her flesh. The second thing she realizes is that her hair is out of her face for the first time in what feels like months.

She’s not the only person around camp who’s been grousing about having their hair in their face; she doesn’t know how Clarke does it, has her hair down every single day, and doesn’t complain, or even seem to mind it. If they had scissors, she’d have but her hair off already. It’s not that it’s so hot on the ground, not really, but it’s warmer than it was on the Ark, definitely warmer than the Skybox, and her hair is tangled, matted, sweaty, and constantly sticks to her neck.

To have it, at least some of it, out of her face, is a blessing, and it feels cleaner, less tangled. She has no idea who’s braided it or why, thinks the whole situation is extremely weird, and as she limps through the cave, she can feel claustrophobia pressing in on her, weighing down on her chest, and she has to get _out_.

\--

She doesn’t make it very far, trying not to scream as she sees the spear cut through Roma’s body, and the Grounder has his palm against her mouth to stifle any noises she makes. She gets tossed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and gets dragged back to the cave and chained up.

This time, the feeling of being trapped is even worse, fear slowly creeping through her veins, turning her mind against itself, and it is in this mindset that she hits the Grounder over the head and starts to scramble to escape, only to Bellamy set upon her and set her free. He makes no mention of the braids in her hair, starts to send everyone back out of the cave when the Grounder stabs Finn and all hell breaks loose.

She is furious, desperate, the entire time they torture him, and it is almost a relief to open a wound on herself with his knife, when he panics and gives them the antidote. She binds the wound herself, sets about treating the Grounder, talking slowly and quietly as she does it, the braid holding her hair back a quiet whisper against her clothes.

\--

When she helps him escape, she stays overnight with him, wrapped up in his arms, and she’s a small woman to begin with, she thinks, smaller now that they’re fighting to survive on the ground, but he makes her feel diminutive, and she’s – well, she _likes_ it, but she also feels a little ridiculous.

The entire situation is beyond strange, as far as she’s concerned. She’s voluntarily defended the man who kidnapped her, and now she’s curled up with him, and if it were any other woman telling her this story, she would seriously question their choices, but. She thinks he’s been trying to protect her, maybe protect all of them, since the beginning. She’s not longer sure that the Grounders are actually hostile, although she can’t totally account for them spearing Jasper. She thinks that it’s a warning, that they’re not allowed on that side of the river, but they must seem like invaders to these people, and how can she fault them for being protective of their place?

And Lincoln, she thinks, is a mystery, a man wrapped in warrior’s garb and paint, but a man who draws, and who heals, and protects her, and she can’t find it in herself to be angry at him or his people.

She especially can’t find it in herself to be angry when she can feel his fingers carding through her hair, gently untangling it, making no comment about how dirty it is. It’s soothing, and she’s fond of the feeling of him doing this. She thinks she’s fond of him, for whatever unfounded reasons.

She wakes up the next morning to leave, has new braids in her hair. She traces them gently with her fingers, imagines Lincoln’s dexterous fingers weaving the strands of her hair together as she slept, smiles to herself. She rolls over toward him, feels his breath against the skin of her face, and gently presses her lips to his. She longs to spend more time here, in the cool and quiet, learning everything there is to know about him, about life on the ground, but she has to go before Bellamy realizes she’s been gone.

She is gone before he wakes.

\--

She sneaks out to see him whenever she can, spends the night curled up in his warmth, his mouth against her lips, the skin along her body, mapping every part of her flesh with his hands and tongue. She’s never had sex before, hasn’t had the opportunity to know what it’s like to love someone like this, to care for them like this, but she finds it easy with him, with his quiet smiles, his low words, and the grin that lights his face when he makes her come for the first time.

She spends the nights with him, listening to him tell stories about the ground, and while she gets very few stories about him, she’s learning how stories from before the bombs have changed, how they’ve been transmitted across people, and she’s delighted to learn. When she has time during the day, he begins teaching her to fight, and she’s sore nearly constantly, every part of her body worked and worked again, but she can feel herself growing stronger, and if she’s not going to be impervious to the things this world can throw at her, she’s going to be damn near close.

She leaves with new braids in her hair every time, and it becomes a habit, lying with her back to Lincoln’s chest, letting him comb and rebraid her hair. It’s an important skill, she’s been told, among the Grounders, among the Trikru, Lincoln’s people, and she knows she should learn it, but he hasn’t offered, yet, and she likes the feeling of his fingers along her scalp.

\--

It’s when Murphy comes back to camp, when she sneaks out to see him to ask what’s going on, that he asks her to leave with him, and she realizes that she loves him, but she doesn’t love him enough. Her people are going to need her, need what she’s learned from him, about the Grounders and the ground in general, and she feels mercenary, like she’s used him for this, but she _hasn’t_ , and she feels like her heart is splintering, but she can’t go with him, can’t leave Bellamy and Clarke and the others to the Grounders. She has to stay, and she has to fight.

She kisses him hard before she leaves, and it breaks her heart even more to see the resignation on his face as he watches her go.

She’s not sure she’s going to see him again until suddenly, he’s right there in front of her, and her leg is screaming from the arrow, and she can feel a similar sensation running through her veins from when she opened her own flesh to poison herself, and she wants to panic, but she’s tired, and she can feel the poison working on her, and she looks into his face and _wants_. She’s not sure that she wants peace, feels the adrenaline running through her veins from fighting, and – she doesn’t hate it. But she wants this man, wants for that to be possible.

When Bellamy gives his permission for her to leave with Lincoln, she feels tears come to her eyes, worries that this is the last she’s going to see of her brother. He tugs her braid affectionately, says “May we meet again,” and turns back to fight.

She’s in Lincoln’s arms before she can say anything else, and it is an effort every step of the way to stay conscious as he moves them toward safety.

\--

He walks her through rebraiding her hair that night as he practices Trigedasleng with her. Her hands are not are careful as his, and she finds herself frustrated by the intricacy of what he’s been doing so carefully with her hair for weeks now. Still, she gets it tied back, and when she looks to him for approval, he is smiling at her, grasping her face in his hands, and kissing her gently.

It is the last time she sees him like that. He leaves to get the antidote, and then he is gone from her, his steady hands and steady heart seemingly lost to her, and it is everything she can do to keep moving, to get back to her people, and start to negotiate between the Sky People and the Grounders, and she doesn’t feel like she belongs, has spent weeks loving a Trikru man, learning his language and his ways, and she knows the Sky people ways, but has never been allowed to act as a Sky person, not really.

She goes back to being a Sky person, though, because her brother is there, and Clarke and Raven are there, and she loves these people, even though she’s only been with them a short time. They go back to doing the things they do, except with more urgency – Clarke’s need to get her people out of the Mountain is driving her, and Octavia can see the toll it’s taking on her, having left them behind.

It’s when she and Bellamy start trying to understand more about the Mountain that she sees him again, and she can feel her heart cracking wide open, the contents spilling out, and she’s desperate, and she’s _afraid_. She hasn’t been afraid of him in so long, and it’s jarring to see the man she loves now become a monster.

\--

When he is still detoxifying from the serum, she talks to him, tries to remind him of who he is. He is quiet in a way that he never was before, reticent to talk to her, and she’s not sure what has happened exactly, where the man she loves is hiding, but she sits with him all the same. She’s been practicing her braiding, and when she shakes out her hair, she gets him to talk her through smaller braids that will keep more of her hair out of her face, and when she looks over at him when she’s done, he has a small smile on his face, and it’s all that she wants.

\--

Clarke kills Finn, and Octavia can see what it costs Clarke, Clarke who never wanted to be a warrior, who only desperately wants to save the lives of the people she loves. Octavia wants to be sympathetic, but when Clarke sends Bellamy and Lincoln to the Mountain, her blood runs cold, and she feels the first twinge of anger.

When Lincoln doesn’t come back, Octavia feels anger creeping under her skin, and she can’t totally look Clarke in the eye. She braids her hair ferociously, tames it back from her face, goes to training and scowls at everyone who questions whether she’s capable.

It’s only when she finds him again, eyes crazed and face snarling that she doubts what they’re doing, what they’ve chosen to do. When she punches him in the face, she feels a line splinter in her heart, knowing that this is never how she wanted to treat her partner, knowing that she was complicit in his decision to go to the Mountain again, to test himself against the pull of the drug – all so her brother could get in safely.

Still, it’s with rage in her voice that she tells him to stand up, to get up, to fight. She can’t do this without him, she thinks, needs him by her side to remind her that there are good things in this world.

When they see the missile crash into TonDC, she thinks she’s going to need that reminder all the more.

\--

She lets him braid her hair again before she goes into battle with Indra. He has been accepted back into the Trikru fold, she thinks, but she knows he still feels like a pariah. She needs the reassurance of this act as much as she thinks he does, and she sighs, letting her shoulders drop for what feels like the first time in years as she feels his hands gently weaving the strands of her hair together. He does a better job braiding than she does, and somehow it doesn’t hurt when he does it (she still has to yank on each individual strand to get it to tighten properly, and her head always stings afterward). 

She knows they’re going into battle tomorrow, he with Clarke, and her with Indra, and she thinks that she should be concerned, but all she wants right now is to be exactly where she is, and it reminds her, briefly, of being curled up with him, feeling him do this for the first time two months ago. She feels like they’ve been here forever, but she has to remind herself sometimes that this is nascent, a brand new feeling she has for him, and it’s complicated, but he’s _hers_ in a way that no person has ever been before.

\--

The battle is a shitshow, start to finish. She still has no idea why the Grounders left, and she has no idea what Clarke has done that led to this, but she’s laying this disaster at her feet and walking away, washing her hands of this mess. All she cares about is getting her brother out of the Mountain, away from the sure torture that Clarke sent him to, and if she can get the rest of their people out, too, then all the better.

She’s grateful when they walk out of the poisonous air of the Mountain to see Lincoln standing there, waiting for her. She didn’t think he’d leave with the Trikru, but he had no idea that she wouldn’t, and it's when she rushes into his arms and he holds her close that she feels, finally, like it might be okay. She’s not sure what’s going to happen now that the alliance is broken, but she knows that the people she holds most dear are safe, at least in this moment.

He braids her hair again that night, and when he’s done, leaving Octavia boneless with relaxation, he is there to remind her, with mouth and fingers, that there are still good things in the world, and this is one of them.


	5. the price of my war is not a price you’re willing to pay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke withdraws Lexa from her all classes as an act of revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rhimes_or_shotts and I co-manage a lab, and sometimes we plot the worst (non-violent) things that could happen to students.

The first time she meets Bellamy, it’s because she’s withdrawing Lexa from all her classes.

She knows it’s petty, okay? She knows. But when she broke up with Lexa (for perfectly good reasons, thank you very much, reasons that are logical and based in the fact that they’ve been fighting nonstop for several months, only interrupted by the times that they have mindblowing makeup sex), Lexa retaliated by destroying all the data that she’s been carefully collecting for months now, getting interviews slowly and carefully, working her way through the local art community, and now? It’s all gone.

(Yeah, she should have had a backup. She’s new to this, okay? She thought having it on her computer and her hard drive was good enough, but when someone decides to take your hard drive _with them_ when they move out, it gets a little more complicated).

So now she’s here, waiting for the dark-haired man doing his homework at the registrar’s office let her submit the paperwork. (She hasn’t done this before, but she knows about paperwork. She worked at financial aid for two semesters, and she’s hoping the registrar’s office is more lax about their paperwork).

“How can I help you?” he asks in a bored voice.

“I need to withdraw from my classes, please,” she says, shoving the paperwork at him.

He glances at it, looks up at her. “Okay – Lexa, is it?”

She nods, fighting to keep the smirk off her face.

He looks back at the paperwork, flips through the pages. “You’re withdrawing from _all_ your classes?” he asks skeptically.

“Change of heart,” she says, smiling at him a little. She doesn’t really want to flirt her way out of this situation, but she’s got a vendetta to carry out, and she’ll be damned if he gets in her way.

He raises an eyebrow and snorts, then stamps the paperwork. “Okay, I just need to process it through the computer, but you’re all set.”

Clarke can’t fight the grin that breaks out on her face, hopes she doesn’t look too feral. “Great! Thanks for your help!”

She bursts out into a cackle when she leaves the building, and yes – revenge is sweet.

\--

She sees him again only two days later when he comes storming into her lab. She’s sitting at her desk, headphones in, when he thrusts the paperwork in front of her face. “What the _actual fuck_ ,” he hisses. “You aren’t Lexa, you’re Clarke fucking Griffin, and I almost lost my job because of you.”

She pulls her headphones out of her ears very deliberately, looks up at him. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over my music,” she says sweetly.

“Look, seriously? I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, but I almost lost my job because you fraudulently withdrew someone from their classes. What kind of asshole does that?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is it not in your job description to _check ID_?” she barks back at him. “Because it damn well is everywhere else in the administration of this school. So if you happened to be distracted when you were doing your job, that’s hardly my fault.”

He laughs darkly at that, pushes his hair back from his forehead. “I don’t know why I expected anything different,” he says.

“What the fuck does _that_ mean,” Clarke says flatly, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Oh please,” he says. “Anyone with eyes knows you’re Clarke Griffin, that your mom can pay for anything you need. You don’t need to be working.” 

Clarke refuses to flinch. It’s nothing new, the criticism that her mother got her into this school, that she’s being supported by her mother. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I actually _do_ need to work, and _do_ value the fact that others do as well.” She’s trying not to feel badly, but she – she didn’t want this guy’s job threatened.

He snorts again. “Yeah, okay. What were you even thinking?”

“I assumed I wouldn’t get caught, obviously,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Well, you definitely managed to get Lexa withdrawn from all her classes, so whatever you’re doing – it worked. Hope you’re happy.” He puts the papers down on her desk and walks out, leaving Clarke feeling vaguely ashamed, but also triumphant. 

\--

The third time she meets him, she’s sitting in her favorite coffee shop, working on transcribing her new interviews. She’s got them backed up more than one place now, and she’s no longer in a terrible, vindictive relationship, so there’s that. Still, she’s struggling to get back into the meat and bones of her project, feels like she’s lost the trust of her community after losing her data.

She sees him out of the corner of her eye, chatting with the barista at the counter. She turns away, hopes he doesn’t see her.

Unfortunately, it seems not to be her lucky day.

“Oh look, it’s the princess,” he says, leaning against the side of her table. His voice is less angry than it was the last time she talked to him, but there’s still a hard edge of derision that forces her to look up and give him a withering stare.

She points at her headphones. “Sorry, still can’t hear you over the sound of my _work_ ,” she says snidely.

He slides the chair out across from her, sits down. “Can I just ask – why would anyone ever do that to another person? Why would you withdraw someone from all their classes?”

“We broke up,” Clarke says briskly, typing at her computer.

“Are you always that vindictive, or - ?” He trails off.

“Is it really your business?” she asks. He raises an eyebrow. “Okay, fine, I guess I did drag you into this. We’d been fighting for months, right, and finally I decide that I’ve had enough, and that it’s time for us to break up. The whole thing was weirdly calm after what’s literally been like, five straight weeks of arguments, and then when I came home after leaving her to have some space, I realized that she’d deleted all the data from the research I’m doing, and had taken my backup drive and left. So yeah, maybe it wasn’t cool to put you in the middle of that, and yeah, that’s a pretty nasty streak on my part, but – she definitely deserved it.” She deflates as it all rushes out of her, leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest.

She meets his eyes for the first time, really, since she met him, and she thinks that she sees, if not compassion, something like understanding in his eyes.

“I’m not super pleased to have been dragged into this, no,” he says, before smirking. “And I never want to be on your bad side, but that is some intense revenge right there. Definitely justified.”

Clarke grins, offers her hand. “Clarke Griffin,” she says.

He laughs. “Yeah, I already know who you are. Bellamy Blake.” 

\--

They don’t really become revenge-seeking comrades after that, but it’s definitely the story Bellamy tells Octavia, and later, all their nieces and nephews about why their auntie is a badass.


	6. the body sleeping next to me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> clarke is the phantom haunting bellamy's dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This perspective is naturally about to be thrown out the window by season three (and I have another one of these I'm working on, also from Bellamy's perspective, that is no less likely to be thrown out the window), but there are still ten days between now and then, so here, have this thing in the mean time. Title from Halsey's "Ghost".

The first night he dreams about her body wrapped around his, he wakes up in a cold sweat.

It’s been weeks, maybe months since she left him standing at the gate, and he feels like he looks for her everywhere, while trying not to look for her. He sees a flash of gold when he’s out hunting, and it’s her hair glinting in the weak winter light, sees the gleam of silver in camp and it’s that ridiculous coat she was wearing the last time he saw her.

He looks everywhere and nowhere, and she’s not here, but he thinks of her constantly.

He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want his thought to be _what would Clarke do_. Sometimes he knows what she would do, and sometimes he doesn’t, but it doesn’t really matter because she’s not here.

And what Clarke would do? Apparently it’s leave them all behind.

\--

When he’s at his best, he doesn’t begrudge her absence. When he’s most frustrated, after a Council meeting, after talking with Jasper, he wishes that he too could disappear into the trees like nothing more than a wisp of smoke. But he can’t.

He has risked everything, every time, for his sister, and slowly, slowly, his circle is expanding to include the remaining forty-six, and some others in the camp. (He trusts David Miller, some of the adults he trains for combat; he trusts the children, but he’s cautious with them, tells them only what he thinks they need to know. Charlotte is a ghost that haunts him constantly, her face pinched and unsure in his mind.)

He doesn’t begrudge Clarke her absence, but he does wish she were around to see the youngest children running through the first snowstorm, wishes she could see the way Octavia’s face lights up when the snow gets stuck in her hair. He wishes she were here for trivial things, mostly, but it’s the things he thinks she quietly appreciated before, even while they were doing their damnedest just to survive.

\--

He wakes up again in the early grey light of dawn with her phantom fingers tangled in his, and the groan he lets out is agonized.

He doesn’t know what to make of this sensation, this memory he has that isn’t his. They were never like that, and as much as his heart and his head are sometimes full of the look on her face when she saw him again, as much as he remembers the brush of his hands against her body when he taught her to shoot: even then, they were never like _this_.

( _this_ is intimate, and it is reassuring, and safe, and loving. _this_ is maybe something he’s never fully had before, and he’s at a loss. he wants _this_ , but can’t imagine it with Clarke).

\--

He thinks, just maybe, that he loves Clarke. He finds her infuriating, sympathizes with her, thinks she (they all) deserve better than this.

He knows now the things she did to keep him safe inside the Mountain, and while his blood boils at the thought of Octavia in danger, of Clarke purposefully putting his sister in harm’s way to keep him safe instead – he feels a sort of reverence for her care for him.

He wonders why she couldn’t exercise the same care in person, why she wouldn’t stay by his side and care for him like he would for her.

(he thinks he knows why, in his heart of hearts. because the weight of _I did it for you_ is soul-crushing, love-ending, and ruinous. he hopes he’s right, hopes she has left to give each of them time to heal, time to lick their wounds and bear their burdens apart, so when they do it together, it is communion and not sacrilege.)

\--

He continues to dream of her. She never speaks, but he now has some idea of what it would feel like to have her nose pressed against his spine, one of her legs tucked between his. He knows what it could feel like to have her soothe her nails down his back, lulling him to sleep.

He never sees her face, but in spite of that, her presence is clear to him. He never gives her comfort back, and it starts to make him anxious, that he doesn’t afford her dream self that same luxury.

The day he has that thought is the day he thinks most strongly about going out and trying to find her. He doesn’t; he stays, because she asked him to. He stays because when she comes back, he thinks they’ll have a real chance, at life, at each other.

He never tries to give her comfort in his dreams after that, but the thought continues to haunt him: _who comforts her_?

\--

The dreams don’t stop when she comes back. She’s aloof at first, trying to find her footing in this world that’s been constructed while she’s gone. He’s not really sure how to help her, or, honestly, if he even wants to.

He feels cruel, pulling away from her like this, but he has to protect his own heart, too, and right now, he thinks that means giving himself some space from her. She doesn’t push, and he’s not sure if he’s grateful or exasperated ( _that Clarke Griffin always pushed, and this Clarke Griffin feels like a ghost in comparison_ ).

Slowly, slowly, they weave themselves back towards each other, and it is a relief to him, a balm he didn’t know he needed, and as much as he finds her distressing in close proximity (because it is now _so clear_ that he wants to tangle his hands in her hair, work his lips down her throat, spend every day curled up in her), he also finds her presence soothing, and now he gets that feeling in his waking hours, not just in sleep.

\--

She curls her body around his for the first time when they’re traveling. She’s been back for months now, through the spring blooms, the oppressive heat of summer, and now, the first cool breezes of fall. They’ve been on the road for two days, traveling from negotiations in Polis back to Camp Jaha, and it’s cool enough that he sees her shivering, even under her blankets. He turns his head over his shoulder, beckons her toward him, and it is exactly as he remembers from his dreams.

It is very odd, he thinks, to be remembering sensations from something that was a phantom, a ghost in the night, and that is only now real.

When he wakes up, her arm is wrapped around him, her hair tickling his nose, and her forehead buried against his back. He’s not sure he’s ever felt so at peace.

\--

She crawls into his tent several nights later, her skin glowing in the candlelight. He is transfixed by her, and when she slowly undresses in front of him, uncertainty in her eyes, his only thought is to be right here, in this chaotic world, in the quiet moments with her.


	7. i’ll be your light, your match, your burning sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Octavia loves her brother, but she loves the world outside their life more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For rhimes_or_shotts, who's had a shitty, shitty day. Have some Linctavia in the round and round the flames universe.

Octavia remembers being thirteen or so the first time she heard Clarke Griffin’s name, heard about the girl piloting a jaeger, on the frontlines of the war. She knew the Griffin name, because everyone did. The Commander and her jaeger pilot husband were infamous, royalty in the fight against the kaiju.

She didn’t want to idolize the golden girl, the girl who had everything already, but she almost couldn’t help it; Clarke Griffin was probably the only reason someone like her could even think about the possibility of piloting a jaeger, and when they lived in the middle of nowhere, it seemed like a dream too good to be true.

\--

When they move to the Northern Pacific base, Octavia feels resentful at being uprooted, but she also feels the first stirrings of awe and more than that, determination. She walks through the hangar, watches the pilots train, and she thinks that it could be her someday. More importantly, she _wants_ it to be her someday.

She changes her mind briefly when Bellamy’s co-pilot corners her, but her terror and mortification light the nascent flame she’d begun to feel, and she begins to train in secret, but in earnest.

When she’s seventeen, the Commander (and she knows the Commander, that she’s one of the youngest ever, and Octavia might not like her all that much, but she respects her, respects what she’s done, suspects that the Commander has been paying attention to Octavia’s surreptitious training) approaches her and offers her a job.

Octavia takes it without a single thought, and suddenly her education is codified, her days broken into hard hours of serious training, science education, punishing runs, and strategy meetings. She hasn’t even sat in a jaeger pilot seat yet, but she walks through the hangar, and the flame inside her grows, sending light through her entire body, and she feels her strength like a shield, like armor.

\--

She starts out piloting with Bellamy, and it’s not seamless, but they work competently together, and through the neural handshake, she can feel the relief Bellamy feels at being able to pilot again. She knows that he’s been under-utilized since his last partner was court-martialed, that he’s been able to help the Commander with strategy, but that he misses being in the seat, seeing everything in person, and she’s happy to work with him, or as happy as she is at seventeen to be sharing her every thought and memory with her brother.

She occasionally sees flashes of their mother through the neural handshake, things she never knew, or angles of memories she shares that show her something new, and she gains a level of respect for Bellamy and the effort he put in to give Octavia a safe childhood. She loved her mother, but retrospectively, she can tell that it was the naïve love of a child, and that she was probably lucky to have that.

\--

The first time she sees Lincoln, she’s not sure if she’s more awestruck by the sheer size of him, or his unbelievable level of attractiveness.

(There weren’t a lot of dating prospects before they moved, and they’ve honestly dwindled since they moved, so it hasn’t exactly been great).

The Commander feels very strongly that everyone spar with Lincoln to ensure that the partnerships she’s assigned don’t function better with a new drift. Octavia thinks it’s a little cutthroat, but when she steps up to spar Lincoln, she feels the flame in her growing brighter, and it’s not a familiar feeling, but it’s pleasant, and it sustains her through the fight, keeps her on her toes, and she knows at the end, looks apologetically at Bell, that she’s going to be reassigned.

\--

Lincoln’s quiet, at first, and she sometimes has a hard time figuring out what he thinks of her. He’s older than she is, she can tell that much, but it isn’t until the neural handshake that she can finally tell – he’s not uncomfortable with her, specifically, but he is reserved, and when they step out of the jaeger, she crosses her arms over her chest.

“You could have just told me, you know,” she says. “I stand by my partners as long as they’re open with me and we work well together.”

He has the good grace to duck his head and stare down at his hands. “It’s part of me I don’t like,” he says quietly. “I know that my partners are going to see it, but I don’t like talking about it.” He meets her graze then, and his eyes are steady on hers. “I don’t use anymore. I haven’t used in years. But I’m still an addict, still dangerous to myself and others.”

She reaches out then, links her hand with his. “Hey,” she says, low and quiet, just for him. “We all have something. You’re an addict. It’s okay. If there’s ever a problem, we’ll figure it out together. And if you get knocked down? We’ll figure out how to get back up.”

He gives her a small smile then, and she feels the trickle of fire in her veins (and she knows, oh she knows – she’s in trouble now.)

\--

She’s never had a real relationship before, and it’s – it’s uncomfortable to her that she’s the one pursuing Lincoln, particularly given how much older he is. She feels immature, sometimes, like it’s an inappropriate schoolgirl crush, and she desperately doesn’t want to be rejected, but she also – maybe she relies on the drift too much, but she knows that he can feel it in her, and he doesn’t say anything.

(It takes months before she realizes it’s not that he’s avoiding letting her down gently, but that he’s mortified by his feelings. They’re a mess, the two of them, and it makes her fond to think about it).

It takes months because it was so easy to read Bell; she already knew him, so the neural handshake was composed of their shared memories, even when they had different perspectives, was built on years and years of working together, sometimes seamlessly and sometimes not, but together all the same.

Building the neural handshake with Lincoln is something else entirely, and while Octavia knows that it’s based on neural patterns and not magic, it sometimes feels like magic to her, how well they work together with so little history between them.

Still, when she finds the kernel of attraction, of affection in their neural handshake, it nearly startles her out of the drift, and she has to fight not to chase the rabbit, to pursue it further down. She can’t tell if Lincoln feels her surprise, her happiness, but she’s alight when she climbs down out of the jaeger at the end of what felt like a shockingly easy fight, and she doesn’t run full tilt at him, but she smiles, feels like her happiness is going to engulf her, and when he looks at her bashfully, she drags him by the hand outside, under the stars, and when she kisses him for the first time, her hands caressing the tattoos swirling gracefully along his neck, she is blazing, fire racing along her spine.

\--

When Clarke Griffin first arrives at their new base, Octavia isn’t sure what to think. Where she used to see an idol, a strong girl built of steel and iron she now sees a broken woman, a tired and lost woman.

When Clarke and Bellamy are paired (and Octavia’s at Clarke’s test matches, sees the fluidity with which they move around each other), she feels – not disgruntled, but wary. She thinks it would be more convenient if her hackles were up because she’s jealous of someone else having a strong connection with her brother (Bellamy has been her entire world entire the past two years, so she thinks that maybe, just maybe, that would be understandable), but really – she doesn’t want Bellamy to be hurt.

It’s a dangerous world they live in, and putting her brother’s life into someone else’s hands, someone so fragile, makes Octavia’s stomach churn.

Still, she likes Clarke, thinks that she’s funny and good and kind, and she seems well-loved around the hangar, not as the daughter of Jake and the Commander, but as herself, and Octavia can respect that.

It all falls apart when Clarke gets hurt, and it’s almost exactly like Octavia feared, except that her brother is hurting for entirely different reasons, and Octavia can’t help him but help Clarke, who doesn’t seem to want to put forth the effort to keep living.

They were forging a tentative friendship, Octavia thinks, and when she thinks about it, she thinks about how important Clarke is to her brother, how much Clarke matters as a _person_ , not just a good pilot, not just the Commander’s daughter, but as a woman and a person all on her own, and Octavia doesn’t know what it’s like to lose faith in yourself, in the very fibres of your being, but she can see Clarke struggling to keep her grasp on life, and she can’t in good conscience let her fail.

And she can see the bond Lincoln has with her, these two beautiful people who see only their own failings, not the importance of their lives, and she thinks the two of them can probably help Clarke back from the brink.

She doesn’t think about how much Bellamy wants to help, and how hard that will be on Clarke, but once she sees it, Octavia thinks that they’re strangely perfect for each other, and once she and Lincoln get Clarke back on the right track, she leaves Clarke in Bellamy’s hands.

To her delight and surprise, Clarke manages to blossom alongside him, and it’s a relief.

\--

When they seal the breach, Octavia has a different kind of trouble adjusting. She grew up a normal kid, until Bellamy moved them to the Northern Pacific. She’s used to the real world; Clarke has no idea what to be besides a pilot, and Octavia sees the way it chafes at her, and even the way it chafes at Lincoln.

It doesn’t bother Octavia to be something besides a pilot, although she knows it’s because she’s had the opportunity to do other things in her adolescence. What _does_ bother her is the lack of things to do. She was energized by the adrenaline of fighting the kaiju, and without that, she feels shiftless, los in a sea of rebuilding that she can’t really help with.

It takes all of them time to adjust, but she and Lincoln do it together. Lincoln and Clarke both work at the free clinic at the nearest town every so often, and Octavia will tag along every so often. She toys with the idea of starting a martial arts school for the local kids, but she thinks it’s too soon, still, and she sits on the idea.

She helps Raven and Wick with their engineering ideas, works in the grow with Jasper, and helps Monty with the organic farm he’s developing.

She does odd jobs, and she loves it, feels like life isn’t meaningless, but isn’t so consistently purposeful that she can’t just _be_.

And when Lincoln comes home from the clinic at night, or she comes in from the garden, they go hiking, cook dinner, sleep curled around each other, and honestly? It’s more than she ever though she’d have. She doesn’t necessarily miss having kaiju to fight every day, but she feels so, so lucky to have been brought to these people, to this place.


	8. love in our summer skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on the post going around tumblr about living in an ag community and constantly running away from your neighbors bombarding you with extra zucchinis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "Summer Skin" by Death Cab.

Clarke is pretty new to the whole small-town living thing. She’s been in and out of big cities for years, growing up on the East Coast with high-powered parents, going to big schools, and then getting jobs wherever she can find them to pay the bills. She’s only just finally made it to the point in her life where she’s ready to live somewhere quieter, slower, and she’s a primary care physician, she can basically go wherever she wants.

So, she picks a small borough, close enough to home that she can get there in a day if there’s n emergency, but far enough away that she can avoid seeing her mother on a weekly, or even monthly basis, and sets up shop. She’s got enough money at this point from working in major hospitals that she can afford the lease on the little cottage-turned-office space, and gets to looking for a receptionist. She finds Harper Martin quickly enough, a quietly funny nurse who’s willing to do double-time bookkeeping and nursing, and opens shop. 

They haven’t had a doctor in this town in a while, she knows, many of them preferring to travel the extra forty miles to the slightly bigger town on the other side of the foothills, but even she can see that, small as this town is to her eyes, it’s big enough that they need a primary physician. 

Even once she builds a steady, if small, client base, her days are still quiet. After years of listening to ambulance sirens and people talking (or yelling) in the streets, she likes it, even if she finds it hard to fall asleep when it’s so quiet.

She moves in the winter, so what surprises her most, honestly, is the first time she opens her door in the summer and finds five zucchinis on her front porch. She has nothing against zucchinis, obviously, but – five? And who’s just leaving zucchinis for her? She’s the town doctor, she can clearly afford to pay for her own produce.

Still, not wanting the zucchinis to go to waste, she drops them in the crisper and heads to work. She’s already got a patient waiting when she walks in, so it slips her mind to ask Harper about it, and when she gets home at the end of the day, shedding her scrubs for her pajamas (and this is by far her favorite thing about being a doctor – it’s basically like wearing pajamas to work), she’s confronted, once again, with the five zucchinis.

After digging around on the internet, she bakes up some zucchini bread and tucks the rest into a pasta that she freezes for later, and doesn’t think twice about it again.

\--

The problem is – it _keeps happening_. She keeps getting zucchinis, and soon enough, it’s tomatoes and other squash, as well. After the first couple of batches of zucchinis, she honestly can’t come up with any more creative solutions, and she seriously, honestly wants to throw them away.

In equal measure, though, she wants to know who the fuck keeps leaving her produce, and wants to make them _stop already_ , unless they’re going to start turning the produce into meals for her.

And what’s worse is that she honestly looks around town, and they’re all such _nice people_ , so it’s not like she can really complain that they’re giving her free food, but she’s starting to feel like she’s in an episode of Little Town on the Prairie, where it was acceptable to give the doctor a chicken in payment.

(She’s still getting paid in normal cash means, obviously, but then there’s all the _fucking produce_ ).

And when she looks around, she also can’t really imagine any one of these people being a produce _vandals_ , like it’s just so bizarre she can’t even fathom. And what’s worse is that, when she moved out here, everyone told her it wasn’t necessary to lock her doors, and she’s from the _city_ , okay, everyone locks their goddamn doors if you’re not an idiot, but she’s sort of – slipped into the habit of leaving her car unlocked, and now she has to start fucking locking it, because people are putting zucchinis in her _trunk_ , okay, and it’s not until they started to smell that she even noticed, and – it’s totally out of control.

And she’s totally sick of zucchini.

\--

Finally, when she’s measuring Octavia Blake to find out how far along she is, she breaks down and asks. “Do you – no, it’s too ridiculous,” she says, glancing at the ultrasound. 

Octavia grins. “Nothing is too ridiculous, doc. You’re looking at my uterus through sound waves, ask away.”

“Is everybody getting random zucchinis right now, or is that just me?”

Octavia laughs, loud and sharp. “You’re finding them on your porch, right?”

Clarke looks over at her. “Yeah, and in my car, and on my back steps, and honestly, if I had a PO box, I’m sure someone would have found a way to get them in there, too.”

Octavia smiles smugly. “Yeah, don’t get a PO Box, Bell is friends with the post ladies.”

Clarke quirks an eyebrow. “Bell?” she asks.

“Yeah, Bellamy. My brother. He owns the farm oh, five miles outside of town? He does the whole hippie organic farmer’s market circuit, but he just can’t sell out of zucchini right now. Everyone’s got zucchini coming out their ears, so he just sort of – gets rid of it. And he probably thought that you’d be easy pickings, honestly. You are new, and everything.”

“And he just – goes around giving produce away?”

“Well, you’ve got to be one of the only people in five boroughs who doesn’t have your own vegetable garden and zucchini situation, so, yeah. I’m not sure he thinks he’s being nice, but he’s going to get rid of them somehow.”

“I’d say you’re about ten weeks,” Clarke says, eying the ultrasound. “Any chance you think you can talk him out of giving me any more? I’m literally drowning under them.”

“Yeah, so is he. But I’ll give it a try.” Octavia wipes off her stomach and stands. “Thanks doc,” she grins.

\--

The thing is, _it doesn’t stop_. She gives it a couple of weeks, not knowing how often Octavia and her brother talk, but after another four weeks, it doesn’t seem like it’s stopping. It’s changing, yes, to more autumn squash than summer squash, but she’s still getting so much _fucking squash_ , and she’s going to turn orange if she doesn’t get a respite.

She means to talk to Octavia about it again, but they get distracted talking about art, and she doesn’t get a chance to ask again.

Which is why she’s here, outside Earthsky Farms, debating if it’s rude to just drive in.

The thing is, she knows that the farm has open hours for people to pick their own produce, that it does apple picking and cider making, and all the obnoxiously cute fall farm stuff. But that doesn’t start for another two months, and she’s still drowning under squash, and at this point, she’s not what sure to expect from Bellamy Blake, but it’s not what she sees when she turns at the car honking at her.

There’s a dark-skinned, freckled guy with longish curly hair at the driver’s seat, and he’s glaring at her, which – yeah, fine, she’s blocking the driveway.

“You going to stand here looking all day, or what?” he snaps.

Clarke wants to be the sort of person who’s just a cool cucumber about assholes, but really – it’s just not her. “Or what,” she snaps back. “Are you Bellamy?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Clarke Griffin. You’ve been donating all your extra squash to me for months now, and I need you to stop. I can’t come up with any more recipes, I can freeze any more, and I swear to god, if I turn orange, I’m coming after you.”

To her surprise, instead of bristling at her snippy tone, he brightens. “You’ve actually been using it?”

“Yes…?” she says slowly. “I assume when people give me free food, they’d prefer it not go to waste, but I’m running out of options, here.”

“I honestly didn’t think you’d use it, really. I figured you were a city girl, probably only liked produce out at the chain stores.”

“Octavia didn’t tell you I’d been eating it?” Clarke asks, confused.

“No. I didn’t know she knew you,” Bellamy says, frowning. “How do you know her?”

“I’m a GP, Bellamy, I’m getting her through the first couple of months of her pregnancy. What did you think I was doing in this town?”

“I don’t know, sojourning from your city girl schtick?”

Clarke props her hands on her hips. “For fuck’s sake, honestly, can you just stop giving me your extra produce? I don’t need it, and at this point, I don’t want it. Now back up so I can get out of your way.”

Bellamy raises his hands in surrender, and Clarke drives off, hoping that’s the end of it.

\--

It’s not, though, and she doesn’t even know why she thought it would be. It’s not _exactly_ that he’s an asshole, because what asshole keeps you stocked on locally grown apples that taste like ginger? This one, apparently.

The squash harvest must have tapered off, she thinks, because now, _now_ she’s swimming in apples. She’s getting about six kinds of apples, and she’s making applesauce, apple cake, apple everything. She’s got baskets of apples out in her lobby, for heaven’s sake, and she’s literally walking the apple/doctor adage, and she _still_ can’t keep up. It’s better, she thinks, than the squash, but she’s not sure how long she’s going to feel that way. She’s on her way to learning how to make apple butter when she brings it up with Octavia again.

“Is this some sort of long con?” She impromptu asks Octavia.

“Nope, pretty sure I’m actually pregnant,” Octavia answers. “I’ve got the morning sickness, the indigestion, the whole nine yards.”

“No, no, not that,” Clarke says distractedly, reading through Octavia’s chart. “This whole produce thing.”

“Wait, are you still getting zucchinis?” Octavia answers, surprised.

“No, now I’m getting fucking apples by the barrel. Those apples out front? I’m assuming their courtesy of your brother, because no one else I know is getting them, and he seems – overly invested in feeding me his leftovers. In spite of my asking him not to.”

Octavia grins sharply. “You asked him to stop?”

Clarke hmms under her breath, and Octavia laughs. “You – Bellamy doesn’t necessarily care about feeding you, Clarke. He just thinks it’s funny that you asked him to stop.”

Clarke meets Octavia’s eyes. “So, asking him to stop again is – “

“Going to make it worse, yeah. He sort of has a thing for feeding people,” Octavia says, before glancing down. “Our mom died when he was just nineteen, and he took over for her so I wouldn’t go into foster care. He was responsible for our garden growing up, and sometimes that was the only reason we had any food, much less good food to eat. He turned it into the farm when he dropped out of college to support me, and he’s been a little – maniacal about feeding people since then.”

Clarke looks at her, brow furrowed, and nods. “But – I can obviously take care of myself,” she says.

“Yeah, but you’re new. And he likes taking care of people, he’s just an asshole about it,” Octavia says. She shrugs. “Do with it what you want, but he _is_ an asshole, in the nicest way possible, and if he thinks he’s getting a rise out of you, he’ll just up the ante. Anyway, anything new and exciting here?” she asks, pointing to her widening stomach.

Clarke smiles and walks her through a couple things before Octavia leaves, thinking the whole time.

\--

A city girl, Clarke most definitely is, but uncreative? She’s definitely not that. And she can read a fucking recipe, thank you very much, which is how she ends up with a mountain of jars of apple butter, and if they’re not canned with the most high-tech equipment, she’s still reasonably confident she’s not going to give anyone botulism (and, if she does, she knows how to treat it, so whatever).

She spends maybe an unrealistic amount of time thinking through how to leave the majority of it on Bellamy’s porch, and ultimately sneaks a crate of apple butter onto his property in the middle of the night, when all the lights are out. She almost considers leaving him a note telling him to get dogs because his property is so easy to get into, but then she considers that no one in this county wants to steal fucking produce, since apparently they’re all drowning in it on their own.

She doesn’t drop by the farmer’s market to check out whether he got it or not, or if he’s selling it. She wants to, but. This dynamic they’re developing feels too weird for her to pursue it.

\--

It goes on this way for a while, into late fall, and only seems to fall off when the first freeze happens. She doesn’t really know what Bellamy does in the winter, but all of a sudden, she’s finding eggs on her doorstep first thing in the morning, once a week without fail, and it’s more eggs than she’s ever needed, but they’re _pretty_ , speckled blue and brown, and even a light green that makes her heart flip over.

She finds cream every now and again, too, and she’s not sure if this is an actual courtship, but it’s the best label she can put to it, especially when she starts making soufflés and leaving them on his doorstep (she’s stopped sneaking in at night; for one thing, she needs her sleep, and for another, Octavia’s told her when he’s out delivering the farm boxes, which, even in the winter, he’s clearly still making it work).

She doesn’t mind it, honestly. Even if it’s nothing more than a friendly joke at this point, the cooking and baking is soothing, and keeps her busy on her days off. She’s honestly gotten pretty good at it, at this point, and it’s giving her ideas (ideas of giving up her practice, opening a café – it’s all a little too idyllic, honestly, but she can’t quite help it).

\--

When spring starts to curl around the edges of winter, she wakes up one morning to find a bouquet of flowers on her doorstep, and leaning against the edge of his truck, Bellamy Blake in his fleecy jacket, grinning up at her.

He walks up the steps, pausing in front of her and shoving his hands in his back pockets. She waits for a minute, studying the flowers before he speaks. “I thought maybe, instead of us doing this back and forth thing forever, we could get dinner,” he says, and his voice is hopeful, nothing like the sneer or the humor she first heard from him.

She looks up at him and grins. “I’d like that. But no zucchini. Somewhere with no zucchini.”

He grins back at her, smoothing her hair off her forehead. “I think I can manage that,” he replies.

\--

(Two years later, they’ve renovated his falling-apart barn into an actual café, she practices medicine twice a week, and when they get married in front of the local judge, he gives her a zucchini and she laughs through her tears.)


End file.
